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Featured Image Credit: Lionsgate
Topics: TV and Film
Alice Lang
Francis Lawrence will be returning to continue the phenomenal Hunger Games franchise later next year with the adaption of its prequel ‘The Hunger Games: The Ballard of Songbirds and Snakes’.
The film, adapted from Susanne Collins’ 2020 novel, will follow a young Coriolanus Snow, the tyrannous president opposed by Katniss Everdeen in the original trilogy, as he mentors district 12’s tribute for the 10th Hunger Games, the defiant Lucy Gray Baird. The story is set 64 years before the first films and explores the historical and political routes of Panem.
Following the release of a teaser trailer by Lionsgate today, fans are demanding more info on the latest instalment. Despite details of the adaption being scarce, here is everything we know so far about The Hunger Games prequel.
When watching the teaser, audiences are invited back to the games by depicting a frozen winter scene, before melting to reveal a golden snake and songbird. Little was revealed about the film’s plot or cast, but its ominousness is well translated to the audience.
The Hunger Games: The Ballard of Songbirds and Snakes, is expected to hit UK theatres on 23 November 2023. Peacock, the US streaming service that recently signed a long-term deal with Lionsgate, are likely to carry the film shortly after its run in the cinemas. In the UK, the platform is available to Sky customers.
Whilst a full cast for the prequel has yet to be announced, Tom Blyth, recently seen in HBO’s The Gilded age, was revealed to portray Snow before the trailer’s release. At the end of May 2022, West Side Story’s Rachel Zegler, who will also appear in Disney’s latest live-action remake of Snow White, announced on Twitter that she would join him as Lucy Gray Baird, the district 12 tribute.
The cast list so far: